While the Wind Still Rises
1944 of London was a passion project of the rotten, I had heard this throughout the country. The gazette’s coverage of the war would certainly never meet the sights I had seen on this warm spring day.
One could never get over the shock of a country’s end, cities ruined, and its people damaged beyond repair. The burning buildings and the screams of agony would never leave my consciousness until the day I would see the city repaired. Even then, I will be walking along this sidewalk as I’m doing now and ponder if the new buildings would have erased the trauma of the last ones.
The events of the last hour, yes it all happened in one hour, left my hands shaking and a permanent taste of vomit and prayers rested in my mouth. I had chanted “God, I swear to you I will sacrifice a lamb and give it to the poor kids in my neighborhood if I manage to get out of this hell. I beg of you, take me home. Take me home. Please. Take me home.” Begging is a humbling feeling. It's the last possible thing you could do to catch the relief that you had looked in the eye and ignored just moments ago.
The boy next to me began lowering himself to the blood-red ground and plopped himself there with a distant look in his eyes. His once, perhaps black, hair was now white from the dust of the fallen buildings and his face had scratches and frown lines that only the war could have brought. This boy was the result of the pitiful thing I had called humanity.
The one scratch on his forehead was from anger, the one that just missed his left eye was from envy, and the one that was on his pointy chin was from the worst of them all, cluelessness. Ironically, the biggest battle should have been the war against ignorance. But they used it as their trusty red right hand.
Just about 15 minutes ago, I had seen this boy on the ground, frowning and clutching his right leg. Everyone around him was running from the disaster behind, just barely managing to avoid suffocating him. Freezing on the spot, I turned to the safe shelter just a few meters ahead of me and then gazed back at the boy. I had made my decision.
I decided on carrying the boy and I was sure that if I came out of this alive, my back would be carrying the pain of the moment wherever I went.
After I was sure, well as sure as anyone can be at that moment, we were safe, I asked this boy a question, and the answer I got left me even dizzier.
“Where is your home?”
He looked at me with a somber expression and muttered “I have no home” which clenched my heart so hard that I shivered. Of course, the burning building the children were running from was what he was referring to with a disgusted look. At that moment, around a quarter to three pm and the location unknown due to the dust that floated around us making it even hard to see the boy that was in front of me, I said something.
To this day, I’m still not quite sure why I said it. Perhaps the events of the last hour had left my mind unable to function properly.
I had a fear that I was ashamed to say out loud. It was something that woke up with me and then tucked me into my bed, whispering a lullaby that left me with tears. I was scared because I hadn’t welcomed her home, I even had heavy locks that guarded the doors but she always managed to worm herself in.
Fear of death wasn’t something I experienced often seeing as I had welcomed it as a part of life long ago. But the one that I had never welcomed always sat on her throne behind my throat, digging her heels there and making it difficult for me to swallow and wallow in tears.
Loneliness was a cruel worker of life. She first waited upon my doorstep, banging on the door and demanding to be let in. She adored making me feel as if I had a choice on the matter. I couldn’t, I never could.
So I decided to welcome a boy, whom I’d never even met before, in. He wasn’t as familiar as her but perhaps that was what I wanted, a foreign presence in my soul.
“Come home with me, then.”
For a long time, he stared at me. Pulling me into the deep cold waters and enveloping me completely. Just as I feared I would drown there in the dark, he blinked and asked a question I was still wondering the answer to.
“Why?”
I blinked as well and stared at his blank face filled with cuts that I feared would get infected. “In times of crisis, people help each other and see beyond limitations. While the wind is still rising, I want to help you live.”
We stayed in front of the burning building for a long time, just the two of us and a few corpses. I had memorized his face completely to the detail when he took a breath in and let out a jagged “Okay.”
I tried to smile.